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…..--....................---- HO Scale 3D Printed Tower & Dome ---

…..--........... --- For Frisco Ft. Scott, KS Depot ---

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You can find all the files to 3D print this object and others on my thingiverse.com account ( HERE ).

I have a friend, Joe, who has a nice N scale layout and is starting on a HO scale that will reside above the N layout. On it he wants to model the now gone Frisco Depot at Fort Scott, KS. This will be a scratch built project. I volunteered to try and make the tower with arches that goes above the main entrance to the depot along with the dome that is on top of the tower. I'd be using Fusion 360 to design the pieces and my Ender 3 Pro to print them out. This is the first HO project I've tried. I've had the printer about 6 months and used Fusion 360 for the same time period. Self taught with Fusion 360 with the help of some good YouTube videos.

Joe was able to come up with floor plans for the depot which really helped in getting the basic measurements for the tower/dome's length and width.

From the floor plan they look to be 13'-10” X 21'. I'll call it 14' X 21'.

I found a few photos of the depot but all were angle views so not the best to work off of.

I blew one up and came up with an approximate scale to use by using a pair of dividers to divide the 21 foot length into 21 equal parts. Now I knew the distance of a foot and could create the scale at the lower right above. Using it I could get guesstimate dimensions for other parts of the tower and dome. Not real accurate but the best I could come up with.

To help on my design projects I also created a N Scale and HO Scale spreadsheet that will convert inches or feet in either scale into scale dimensions I use with Fusion 360 to design the items as close as possible. I can also put a distance (right side above) and see how far that is in N or HO scale feet and inches.

Fusion allows you to bring a picture in and place it on a plan and then scale it so it is scaled to the scale you are working in. I did those steps with the outcome shown above. I could then use different draw commands to outline ½ of the dome. Not real accurate do to the picture being an angle view but still better than nothing. I could then 'extrude' the cutting plane above into a solid with that same outline on one side.

Having the shape of the roof on one side I could turn it 90 degrees and put the outline looking at the dome from the tracks on the other side and...

…. cut it again. Are these outlines an exact reproduction? No but for our purposes close enough.

I had to work with the length of the two sides but once that was done I had one quarter of the dome designed.

Fusion 360 lets you mirror items and then combine them after the mirroring process. I did that to get one half the dome and ….

….. then again to get the whole dome. There are a lot of little steps in here that I'm not documenting and I wouldn't of tried doing this project in the first couple months of using Fusion but it isn't a terrible hard program to learn and you can download it free if using for personal use and not commercial use, which I'm not.

After successfully printing the dome (see pictures further down) I moved on to the arched tower under it and designed one forth of it similar to what I did for the dome.

Mirrored and combined it twice and had the design ready to print.

The final step was to design the detail and flagpole holder that resides on top of the dome. I think the pictures tell the story pretty well going forward.

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I'm happy with the results and hope Joe will be also. The project also pushed me to further my learning using Fusion 360. I'll get the pieces in the mail to Joe and we will see if he will be able to use them in scratch building the rest of the depot. It is a big project. You can find more pictures of the depot on the internet ( HERE ).

Maybe some one can use these prints in another way so I'll put them up on my thingiverse.com account ( HERE ).

You can find all the files to 3D print this object and others on my thingiverse.com account ( HERE ).

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